Why is aluminum powder so expensive?

[Skycastlefish]

The reason I ask is that aluminum is the most abundant metal in earths crust. Supposedly, it’s the third most common element behind oxygen and silicon. One could argue that salt and aluminum are so abundant that they could never be over mined by humans. So why is the price so inflated?.

 

Thanks,

 

Skycastlefish

[TheSidewinder]

Several reasons.....

 

Supply and Demand.

 

Government regulation (by clueless Nanny-State Liberals).

 

Also, the Aluminum found in the Earth's crust is in the Oxidized state, requiring unbelievable amounts of electricity to convert it back to the metallic form we all love so much.

 

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe we've *never* found deposits of Aluminum that *weren't* Aluminum Oxide.)

[Skycastlefish]

Excellent answer!

[Miech]

Aluminium isn't expensive, refining it is though. It is so reactive that it only occurs as bauxite or other minerals, which have to be melted and electrolyzed to create pure aluminium. Both steps take a whole lot of energy, and money. Then, to make it into the powder we want, it has to be melted again, sprayed by a stream of inert gases and sieved to the right mesh. Then there are some profits and taxes that have to be paid, as well as shipping and hazmat fees. Where the price of raw bauxite is well below a dollar per pound, the refined and powdered form can therefore be well over 20 bucks a pound.

[Mumbles]

Yep, it all (or most), exists as bauxite. It's getting a lot cheaper, but the processing for our uses is pretty energy demanding as well. The price people are willing to pay really is what inflates it. On a small bulk scale, I've never seen Al go for over $10 a pound for any commonly used form. ALEX would be a bit more. ALEX is submicron electro-exploded Aluminum powder. Think aluminum popcorn.

[Ventsi]

It has awlays facinated me. How do they make spherical Al? I can see how the flake would be made with a industrial mill or a stamp mill. Do they vaporize the Al and quickly cool it somehow? Edited September 13, 2009 by Ventsi

[Arthur]

Aluminium ORE is soo cheap!! then you have to ship it to a country with cheap electricity for the electrolytic separation of the fused bauxite into Aluminium and oxygen. This then is prepared into ingots and other base shapes and sent for alloying.

The electricity used makes the metal expensive.

 

The problems for us involve the cost of doing special preparations on a scale that is barely commercial so the price goes up, then someone has to get a drum of Al out of the normal trade route and onto our route. Then someone has to weigh out 100g packs and pack them for sale.

[Ralph]

it might be worth mentioning that if we used sodium metal for more than just the limited uses it would sell for 1/3-1/2 the price of aluminium

 

aluminium requires far larger amounts of energy than almost all other metals due to the very high melting point of aluminium oxide they use cryolite to reduce the melting point but you try melting cryolite and tell me how easy that is

 

aluminium powder costs quite a bit as it has to be pressed specially if we are talking about atomised it is heated till it melts and passed through an atomiser (like the head on a spray bottle) and they must use an inert gas this uses lots of energy or flake aluminium use steric acid stamp milled this uses lots of energy

[a_bab]

The answer lays in the question itself.

 

Why is aluminum powder so expensive?

 

He knew that Al metal is cheap (most abundant metal on Earth); hence the powdering process must be expensive. And it is.

[firetech]

Ventsi, to my understanding atomized Al is melted and then blasted with air through holes like a water atomizer. It is then quickly cooled and sorted my mesh (maybe).

[Swede]

Cool trivia - Aluminum was once a curiosity, a very expensive one, and worth more than gold or silver. The little pyramid at the top of the Washington Monument is Aluminum! At the time, it was the equivalent of putting a Platinum or gold pyramid up there!

 

In 1879 construction resumed under the supervision of Lt. Colonel Thomas L. Casey. and four years later the monument was completed. The rather flat top was changed into a pyramidal one. The tip of the pyramid top was made in aluminum, at the time a rare and precious metal.

 

You can win some bets at a bar with that one.

[Yafmot]

Aluminum is in itself fairly cheap, but Al powder is what you call a high value added product. Look at a box of Wheaties. About a nickel's worth of wheat, and the rest of the cost is from processing, handling, packaging, advertizing, transportation, distribution etc. The more things you can do to a product, the more you can charge for it. Stainless alloy foil is more expensive as it gets thinner, because it had to make more passes through the rollers. They had to DO MORE TO IT.

 

In the case of Al powder, it first has to be reduced in thickness to a thin foil, then shredded & milled. Another method is Atomization, where molten Al is forced through a spinaret and into a high velocity stream of air, which knocks the streams into tiny droplets that can then be cooled and classified (sized). Some flake starts out as atomized, spherical particles and is then milled & flattened to size.

 

So Let's take a look at the whole process. The Bauxite is in the ground. The Bauxite is dug up & transported to a central location (the refinery). Value added. The time, effort and multi-megawatts are expended to de-oxidize the Al. Value added. The aluminum is poured into standardized ingots that can be further processed. Value added. The ingots are rolled into foil. Value added. The foil is processed into flake. Value added. The flake is passivated. Value added. And in every stage, various safety regulations have to be complied with. Cost added. Transport between succeeding customers. Cost added. Handling & distribution. Cost added. Lot analysis & tracking. Cost added. Advertizing & marketing. Cost added. And it goes on. Add in the regulatory nazi-ism that permeates all levels of government, and we're lucky to get two pounds per year @ under $30 a pound.

 

The old E&W forum had some great info on how to turn cheap Al foil into roughly 5 micron flake. I fear that all too soon, we'll be lucky if we can even do that.

 

The next time you grumble about paying $2.50 for a bag of potato chips, you can "cheer yourself up" with the knowlege that there are maybe two potatos in it, along with a pinch of salt and some cottonseed oil, maybe totaling twelve cents worth of goods.

 

And that, my friend, is why the price seems so "inflated."

[Mumbles]

Don't bring up old posts just to add nothing to the conversation. Nowhere did he ask where to find aluminum powder, or of it's uses.